CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — The director of Chicago’s Public Health Department said a fall COVID-19 surge is likely given the number of cases are going up again.
Dr. Allison Arwady, commissioner of Chicago’s Department of Public Health, said that increase is because of the Delta variant. And she said the numbers are expected to keep going up into the fall.
“Every person who gets vaccinated makes that likely surge that is coming with Delta in the fall — makes it a little bit lower for everybody and helps us put this even more behind us,” Arwady said.
Los Angeles is currently experiencing a surge and the city is now under a mask order.
Arwady said a mask mandate isn’t needed in Chicago at this point.
“I don’t want to say, ‘start wearing your mask.’ I want to save that for a time that we might really need it,” she said.
Arwady, who appeared on an online forum sponsored by AARP and the Chicago Sun-Times, said the city is still doing 4,000 vaccinations a day. As of Sunday, the city health department reported 77 confirmed COVID-19 cases and conducted 6,907 tests.
Dr. Ngozi Ezike, head of the Illinois Department of Public Health, also participated in the forum.
On Friday, the IDPH reported 4,449 new confirmed and probable cases for the previous week. Seventy-three percent of Illinois adults have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose and more than 57% of Illinois adults are fully vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.